


See You Later Alligator

by crostiina



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Snapshots, Suicidal Thoughts, all of these barely mentioned and mostly following canon, boys being boys in a store at 3am, lots of introspection and thoughts about the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25184845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crostiina/pseuds/crostiina
Summary: “Adam.” he read out loud, because he didn’t know what else to do, because he was bad at conversation yet he definitely felt the need to say something.He thoughtAdamwas going to be even more annoyed and tell him off for being there and close and talking to him. He didn’t know why he did, maybe it was just that night messing with him, maybe it was just him never feeling right anywhere he went. Adam just shrugged.“Told you I wasn’t Janine.”Graduation year, Ronan Lynch is wasting his time with horrible friends and too many vices. Things change when he meets Adam Parrish, local (apparently) sane person and ambitious soul working the graveyard shift at a gas station's market as he waits for acceptance letters to come. Somehow, they both happen to become the best part of the other person's day.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 34
Kudos: 114
Collections: TRC Big Bang 2020





	1. Janine

**Author's Note:**

> biggest thank you to [creativefiend19](https://archiveofourown.org/users/creativefiend19), who was willing to be my beta even after I've be too chickenshit to ask for one, and [fricklefrecklefloof](https://www.instagram.com/fricklefracklefloof/) who was lovely to work with and made amazing [art](https://www.instagram.com/p/CCgw9sGJeKP/?igshid=x16apyerpoph) for this!

A night, Ronan had learned by living many, endless ones, could feel many different ways. It could be exciting, streetlights flashing in front of his eyes, substances-induced euphoria, wind on his face, high-pitched laughter that made his throat hurt by the time morning came. It could be scary, a driver half-asleep behind the wheel, walking barefoot on concrete in the middle of nothing, being too fucked up to understand what was happening, guns shooting at the sky in rage, to make a point, to remember.

Most of the time it was easy and forgettable, half a bottle of vodka, light chatter in the backseat, a car parked in the cemetery and his back pressed against soft grass. Enough to forget the shitshow his life was but not enough to forget that he was supposed to care about whether he lived or died. It had to be that way or he wouldn’t have come at all. As much as Ronan liked hanging with the wrong crowd to make Declan all worked up and being able to speed while being completely hammered without the risk of getting  _ his _ car horribly wrecked, he didn’t intend to be found dead in Joseph Kaivinsky’s Mitsubishi with him and his moronic friends. Neither was he the type to be involved in things he didn’t want out of boredom and numbness, not while being sober, at least.

But that night wasn’t easy, nor exciting or even scary, yet it was still leaving a bad taste in his mouth. It was uncomfortable. The others had picked him up way too late, for once that he was actually managing to fall asleep without a struggle, so he had to wriggle out of his pajamas to fit himself into cold clothes, just to sit in a car that already smelled like weed to go absolutely nowhere. One could have argued that going out was his choice - a very fair argument - but after being jolted awake by sixteen texts and a phonecall there was no way he was going to sleep anyway, so at least he could spare himself the humiliation of facing sleeplessness by himself again.

That would have been just mildly annoying by itself, but Kavinsky had also come alone in his car, leaving the others to their own, which usually meant he had to sit alone with him, which usually meant that Kavisnky was going to be weird and gross all night, which usually meant having to walk home because it was too always much too soon. That was a lot of speculation that went nowhere, since as soon as they parked the others got down from their cars to slide in the backseat and smoke together, but it wasn’t enough to shake the uneasiness off of him. There was always the ride back home.

Ronan didn’t want to smoke that night - like most nights - and being completely immune to peer pressure he didn’t, but it didn’t really make a difference when they were all doing it in the same car with the windows closed. He had put his headphones in and tried to pull himself away, but it was no use. The smell was too strong, the streetlamp in front of them too twitchy, the background chatter too loud, buzzing and buzzing in the back of his head like it wanted to scratch through his skull. The neon light of the dashboard clock burned through his mind, flashing 3:33 which wasn’t supposed to mean anything but somewhere deep down it felt like a wicked hour. He stared at it, long and hard, waiting for at least one of the numbers to change in the hope it would make everything better, but when 3:34 appeared Kavinsky’s hand brushed over his thigh and he felt his skin crawl.

Ronan was a weird and impulsive guy by himself, but drinking made him worse and drink he had, that night, so he didn’t even try to stop himself from pushing the hand away. He knew what he was, he knew what Kavinsky was and how little care he had for his body, for other people’s bodies, for what intertwining meant. He didn’t care for empty touch and meaningless sex, that was just who he was, but Kavinsky didn’t care for  _ his _ opinion on the matter. It always bothered him, always angered him, but that night was too tense. That night it made him  _ feral _ .

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he shouted, his jaw tense, his eyes trying to burn into the emptiness of Kavinsky’s but clearly failing.

He just laughed, hazy and mocking, then shrugged.

“Shit, Lynch, you should try removing that stick from your ass sometimes. It might even make you fun.” he whispered, playfully pinching his cheek.

Ronan slapped the hand away, this time.

“Fuck you.” he spat, getting out of the car before he had time to reply with something even more stupid and humiliating.

He realized, as soon as he stood up, that he wasn’t as stable on his feet as he could be, but that didn’t really matter as long as the others stayed inside. He started walking before he could put the gas station into focus, the cold night air prickling his skin and slowly pulling him back to half-consciousness, enough to make him realize how incredibly  _ haunted _ the place felt, cracked concrete and rusty metal, flickering light making something into his stomach tighten for absolutely no reason.

He sighed between his teeth and started walking faster, headphones hanging low around his neck, trying not to let all the noises overcrowding in his brain pry fear out of him. As soon as he stood in front of the entrance, the lights bright and warm inside he felt the tension slide off his body like warm water. If everything about that night was weird and uncomfortable, this place was a safe haven of familiarity. 

Kavinsky and his idiot friends always got high in the same places - not like they really had a choice, in that small of a town - and Ronan never liked staying with them when they did it, so it was only normal, for him, to wander there. He liked spending some time hanging around, looking at magazines and sometimes exchanging in meaningless chatter with the lady who worked the night shift. He wasn’t exactly the type to be polite or even remotely pleasant, let alone with a stranger, but Janine was genuinely nice in a way few people were, no matter how tired or sad she looked sometimes. He had witnessed too many times the way drunk or high idiots - and often his own friends - treated her not to make an effort. 

So he didn’t think too much about looking proper before entering, aware that the person inside didn’t mind how dark and menacing he looked.

“Could you please throw away your drink, sir? It’s not allowed in the store.”

Okay, maybe someone  _ did _ mind. At least about the empty can of beer he was still carrying around like the idiot that he was.

To be fair, Ronan wasn’t used to being rigorous about that either: Janine just let him throw away whatever shit he had forgotten he had on him in the trash behind the counter. But, also to be fair, the voice that had just reprehended him wasn’t exactly Janine’s. Because it was a boy, probably his age, probably pissed off at him for being idiotic.

He froze in confusion as he realized it, furrowing his eyebrows, before slowly turning to the side. Of course, he was already way past the desk and well into the isles, so it didn’t exactly help.

“You’re not Janine.” he uttered, his wit annihilated by intoxication and discomfort in a way that made him want to slap himself right in the face.

“I’m not.” the voice uttered back, confused and definitely annoyed.

Ronan didn’t need to see the boy’s face to come to know he probably thought he was an idiot. So he bit his lower lip and walked backwards, until he was out of the store once again and could drop his beer into the trash can just outside.

“Thank you very much.” 

He didn’t sound exactly thankful, but then again he was sadly stuck with dealing with him, so he didn’t have any reason to be.

Only then Ronan turned towards the desk to look at him. And then immediately wished he hadn’t. 

Standing behind the cash desk, long arms hanging at his sides and a mildly displeased look on his face, stood the most beautiful boy he had ever seen. He was the kind of handsome some people almost didn’t notice, but that after giving a good look at it they just couldn’t stop thinking about. An absolute spectacle of tan skin constellated with freckles, not in the white-person-unable-to-tan way they appeared on Ronan but in charming patterns that felt positively unfair, a bone structure probably carved by actual angels and eyes so bright and deep they made him feel naked. It hit him like a punch in the guts. 

He lowered his gaze immediately to the cheap candy bars on the counter to avoid staring at him in the face, like he was afraid the boy’s eyes were going to burn a hole inside his stomach and it was stupid, because he could have just stepped away to pick up the first thing that came to mind and leave, but he just didn’t feel in control of his body anymore. 

Something extremely childish inside of him screamed to run for his goddamn life. He looked up at the boy’s chest instead, at the dark red uniform and the tag with his name on it.

“Adam.” he read out loud, because he didn’t know what else to do, because he was bad at conversation yet he definitely felt the need to  _ say something. _

He thought  _ Adam _ was going to be even more annoyed and tell him off for being there and close and talking to him. He didn’t know why he did, maybe it was just that night messing with him, maybe it was just him never feeling right anywhere he went. Adam just shrugged.

“Told you I wasn’t Janine.” he whispered, his lips curled in the tired, mocking hint of a smile.

Ronan felt his knees give out, making him slip awkwardly to the side for no reason but the warmth overcoming his chest at the sight of that smile. It was just one moment before he caught and propped himself up again, but it was a long, shameful one.

Curse Adam for being beautiful and, apparently, really fucking funny.

“Are you okay?” he asked, not exactly concerned but definitely making the effort.

Ronan nodded, keeping his eyes low to survive the horrifying shame of what had just happened. He looked at the counter, tracing with his fingers the decorative postcards glued to the wooden surface.

“What happened to Janine?”

He didn’t know why he thought about her all of a sudden. Maybe it was the thought that if she had been there, Ronan wouldn’t have made a fool of himself in front of a beautiful boy. Maybe it was the thought of her small hands on that same counter, always full of small burns and ink stains, her nails short but always painted the brightest colors. Maybe the small, silent comfort she brought in a life that kept becoming more and more deprived of warmth, without getting too close, without making it difficult.

“I think she met someone and left. I didn’t ask for the details.” Adam replied, slightly confused, but it was okay.

Janine had three children and a bad husband. She hadn’t told him, not all of it at least, but Ronan was observant, used to listening to silences and what they meant. 

He hoped she had found someone nice to treat her with the respect she deserved, or that she hadn’t found anyone at all and had just decided she was too good for that life and that town.

“Good for her.” he whispered, turning his gaze up to Adam again, to his pretty blue eyes and the dark circles under.

Something about him looked ready to catch fire. 

Ronan never wanted to leave that place. But had to, eventually. Life wasn’t just a comforting spot in the middle of the night.


	2. Heathcliff II

Adam couldn’t wait to leave that wretched place.

It was a recurring thought, playing in his mind again and again, the cheap-sounding soundtrack of the b movie his life was. It was the first thing popping up in his brain every morning when he woke up, church bells ringing and summer heat melting down his skin as if to remind him that, yes, all he could afford was a cramped apartment above a church and that somehow was  _ still  _ a major upgrade. It persisted as he fought to squeeze out every last bit of toothpaste left on his 99 cents toothbrush and put on his thrifted clothes and walked to his underwhelming and underpaid job. It followed him around in the cheap deals he chased around town for lunch and the cans of off-brand energy drinks littering his small station at Boyd’s. 

It was different, before graduation. He  _ had  _ been tired and disgusted and ready to leave, but he didn’t have the  _ time _ to think about it. When he wasn’t working he was at school and when he wasn’t at school he was too busy studying and doing whatever he could to  _ not _ think about where he was and why and how far all of that stood from greatness. He was fighting, all the time, against his father and the violence tearing its way under his skin, against himself and the easiest paths he could take to forget but sink lower. Hate was nothing but fuel, something he could put into work and study and survival while the blood of his blood did his best to break him down to dust. There was no way to be sick of life, in the trailer. He was too busy being terrified of what it would to him if he’d stop.

It took Adam seventeen minutes, the night after graduation, to pack everything worth taking and leave his family home, if he could even call it that. He didn’t even take the time to think through most of it. He just listened to his gut, acting quickly and methodically to get it done fast and silent, his heart beating so fast and hard he could hear it, his fingers boneless and inconsistent but never hesitating. 

At 11:49 p.m. his father started snoring. By 1:12 a.m. Adam was already sitting outside his best friend’s house, shivering and hyperventilating, a duffle bag with all his belongings at his feet and Blue holding his hand tight. 

He couldn’t think about his life then, or the day after, or the following week. Because as he worked, and carefully moved around town to thrift essential furniture and buy two dollars plants just because he could, and tried to build himself a new, albeit temporary, home, he had to focus on stopping his hands from shaking. On trying to find a cure to sleepless nights and panic attacks and the ongoing fear that someone was going to find him and drag him back by his hair, even if he was eighteen and in no way bound to his father anymore. On forcing himself to live and breathe and act like a normal person when he felt weird and hazy and inconsistent. On learning to sleep at night and wake up late and do normal things like reading for fun and going on walks.

Because he did have time for that, now. So much time, in fact, that he didn’t know how to fill it, he didn’t know what to think about while he worked or plan when he lay in bed before falling asleep. Every waking moment up to that had been stretched and consumed to fit in as much productivity as possible, to both flee his home and do everything in his power to secure a future where life was worth living. He didn’t know how to function like that, without time chasing after him.

Everything felt weird and useless and he couldn’t get through one full hour of unproductivity without the feeling he was wasting it crawling under his skin. He took another job, a night one, so that he could finally be spared any attempt at sleeping for more than four consecutive hours while also saving up more money for both college and the expenses that were going to come up as soon as he got his degree. All that on the off chance he actually got accepted to at least one of the schools he had applied to.

Only then he had finally managed to calm down and let space in his mind for complaints. Now, his thoughts had become a mixed bag of purposefully ignoring everything about his past and dwelling into how much he hated the present, in a way that would have almost been trivial, if his present hadn’t included himself. Complaining was a privilege, which was why Adam liked it so much, now that he could afford it. Now that no one was there to yell at him to shut up. 

It was nice. Pulling up at the station and complaining to himself about his shitty car, exchanging a look of silent understanding with the man covering the shift before his because now he was rested enough to be able to actually look at him, at everyone, and not just focus on task after task before collapsing. Coming there five minutes early and not beating himself up for how careless he was being. Sneaking in a phonecall to Blue when she was also working a late shift and felt like telling him something. Carrying a book and keeping his left index as a bookmark because it had settled in, how little no one cared about what he did as long as he kept an eye on the store. Learning, slowly, carefully, that maybe something bad  _ wasn’t _ going to fall on his head at all times.

It was scary, sometimes, how nice it was. And those times, Adam would remember that everything was temporary and that his life wasn’t known for being merciful and kind. That he hadn’t received an acceptance letter yet. That maybe those quiet months were just a rest stop before plunging back again into misery. 

So he tried to keep a balance. To not completely lose himself between slumber and terror.

It had been a good night, the first time the boy had come. The second was a neutral one.

Objectively speaking, Adam had no reason to remember him. He hadn’t been particularly rude or polite, nor had he awoken any type of feeling strong enough to strike him. But he was of a peculiar sort - tall, lean, dark, with a single huge tattoo crawling all over his back and blue eyes as piercing as they looked lost. A guy like that stood out, in a small town, especially when he awkwardly crawled into stores in the dead of the night and asked for the lady working before him like he actually cared.

So he did notice, when he came in the day after, looking definitely less drunk but somehow even more awkward, shyly looking around without real intent as he dragged himself between the isles like a ghost. Adam only half looked at him, to make sure he didn’t steal, occasionally tilting his head up to spot him, only to be answered every time by a distressed icy stare. There was something soft about his gaze, younger than his years and infinitely more innocent than his looks would betray. It made him feel weird, in a nice, warm type of way.

He really didn’t look like he knew what he was doing.

“Do you need anything, sir?” he asked, atter twenty minutes of observing the guy stomping around like a lost child.

He saw him hesitantly appearing from behind a magazine stand, looking two shades paler and even more confused than before. It lasted a moment, before some kind of sense returned into the guy, who blinked a couple of times and showed him a bruised hand.

“I need something to take care of this.” he muttered.

Adam signed at him to get closer, so that he could see the wounds better. It looked fairly recent, though not enough to warrant a 2 a.m. trip, let alone being bad enough for it: a couple of scratches on the side, scraped knuckles and a light bruise just above the wrist. Definitely not a punch, maybe a weird drunken accident.

“Have you disinfected it?”

The other looked at him, an eyebrow raised in bewilderment. 

“Do I look like I own disinfectant?”

Adam wasn’t the type of guy to find “rude” charming, but something about how spontaneous and childish it had been was almost pleasing to witness.

He shrugged, pointing at the corner of the store displaying pharmaceutical supplies. 

The boy didn’t thank him, walking directly to grab what he needed only to loudly curse after just a few seconds. Adam looked at his back, amused at how much he seemed to be able to overreact to what ended up being harmless Hello Kitty bandaids. 

“These were the only ones left.” the boy murmured, placing the box on the desk.

He didn’t say anything, simply scanning the product and then sliding the card the boy gave him. For one moment, he saw a glimpse of the owner’s name: Ronan N. Lynch. It sounded almost hauntingly fitting.

He handed it back with the receipt and only then the guy - Ronan - proceeded to thank him, in a murmur that sounded more embarrassed than disgruntled. He didn’t look like he was done.

Adam watched him looking around, once again, as if looking for something to latch onto. He looked at the candy packets on his left, then at the badge on his uniform, stopping abruptly when he caught sight of the book he had temporarily placed at his side.  _ Wuthering Heights. _

He reached for it without asking and looked at the library card.

“You borrow this a lot.” he pointed out. 

Adam grabbed it back defensively, but later realized that there was no need.

Ronan wasn’t mean, nor mocking. He didn’t even sound surprised: it was a fact and he was taking it in. 

The scariest thing of this new, nice, relaxing pause in his life, was that sometimes Adam forgot that it didn’t mean anything. That sometimes the years of dirt, and misery, and abuse, felt so far and different from how things had become, that he forgot they had ever existed. That sometimes he believed he was healed, and normal, and like any other kid with an uncertain yet undoubtedly bright future. Sometimes, he would wake up rested or buy a really nice shirt or go for ice cream with Blue and think:  _ this is how it’s going to be forever. I’m good and normal and will be happy. _ And it was complete bullshit.

Adam was ruined. He had been ruined before he was even born by the blood that was given to him and only got worse and worse as he was raised, a beast pushed under lamb’s skin, to suffer and then continue his legacy. And he needed to remember it so that he wouldn’t fool himself, so that he wouldn’t hope for more than he could sustain and never try to achieve anything like family or happiness or love. 

That was what Wuthering Heights was for. To remind him that monsters, born or made, were only destined for misery and loneliness. Everything else was just dragging other people in the dirt with him. He wasn’t going to do that. He wasn’t going to forget.

“Sorry.”

Adam blinked a couple of times. He had almost forgotten that Ronan was still there. He sighed slowly and put the book down behind, feeling shame pooling down in his stomach for how sudden, how violent he ended up being over nothing.

“No, it’s fine. It’s just a book.”

Ronan shrugged, now slowly running his fingers over the etching decorating the cover.

Then he said the last thing he would expect a guy like that to say, in a store, to a stranger.

“My mom liked this a lot.” he whispered, looking as if he were far away, floating far from this body into something warm and soft to the touch “She said it was about finding love in hopeless places.”

It was the first time Adam saw him smile. It was a small, delicate thing.

For a moment, breathing felt impossible.


	3. Aurora

Everything was about love, for his mother. 

Wuthering Heights had stuck with him because it didn’t make any sense, at first. The entire discussion had started when his brother had to do a book report for it. He complained all throughout the read about how terrible everyone was and how big of a triumph of misery it all was.

They had talked about it over dinner, after a week of reading in silence to avoid the occasional presence of their father as much as possible. Declan had waited for him to leave again, to begin any conversation, like he usually did. Back then, Ronan didn’t understand the mechanics of it, he just thought his brother was a weird and mean teenager.

He had declared it was just a bad book about a bunch of assholes making everyone’s life worse to compensate and Aurora had shot him a confused, slightly sad look. Ronan knew she didn’t like how dark Declan was becoming about everything. And how much he cursed, because it absolutely had increased the rhythm at which everyone cursed.

“You aren’t wrong, but I don’t think it’s just that.” she had explained, sweet and calm in a way that always made everyone back down a little, realizing how rude and mad they sounded in comparison: “It’s about some people turning their back on love for reasons bigger than themselves and forcing others to pay the price. And some other people finding love in the most unlikely place and using it to fix everything that had been broken before.”

Declan didn’t know what to say to that and Ronan, had he tried, wouldn’t have been able to do it either. He’d thought about it again, a couple of years later, when he had stumbled upon the same book and had almost drawn a different conclusion, before realizing he liked hers better.

His mother had a way of spotting those things, softer messages, silver linings, hidden gems of beauty in the most crooked parts of the world. Everything, in her words, was about love.

Knowing her, it made sense. Her entire life, after all, had been about love. Ronan had no memory of his mother being involved in anything that didn’t include small acts of affection. She cooked two different meals every time, because he was a picky eater, and sometimes she did three, because she didn’t want Matthew or Declan to think he was the only one getting special attention. She spent half an hour with each of them, every night, tucking them into bed, making up stories or reading them books or simply chatting, to make sure they all had at least that single moment together. Everytime Ronan saw her she was doing something for one of them, fixing and repainting the bookshelf in Declan’s room, sewing a dress for Matthew’s school play, looking for something Ronan had mentioned losing, making the house prettier for when his dad would come back. 

All that she did was about love, so she managed to spot it in everything else too.

Every movie they watched together, every book she read to them, the explanation behind every hormonal bad mood afflicting Declan, everything had love behind it, somehow.

Ronan liked it a lot, when he was a kid, and he didn’t really have time to outgrow the charm that worldview had: by the time  _ he _ had become a dark and moody teenager, things like that were painful jabs of memory he couldn’t afford. 

Sometimes, when he was really drunk or just fucked up enough to be partially numb to it, Ronan thought about how much he missed thinking like that. How nice it was when things were warm, and soft, and he could afford to believe that, eventually, everything would turn out fine.

His life hadn’t been like that in so long. Nothing was about love now.

He didn’t even know what it  _ was _ about, to be honest. His days were just a never-ending streak of waking, eating, ignoring his family, taking a nap, eating, ignoring the only good friend he ever had, drinking, reading or playing video games or doing anything to forget the rest of the world existed. Things had been like that for almost a year, now, ever since he had finally turned eighteen and quit school for good. He didn’t exactly have the most fulfilling life even before that, but school, church and the inevitable outside contact that came with both forced him to maintain at least a vague grip on time and reality. 

Now days had the capacity of going by with nothing accomplished, not one word spoken, sometimes without him ever leaving his bed. He didn’t really mind, most of the time. He didn’t need to work, he had one place to live and a couple more to crash in, if he ever wanted. Ronan didn’t have huge dreams or aspirations anymore, didn’t particularly like anything nor felt the need to make his life something decent. He wasn’t always like this. He knew, concretely, that he hadn’t always been like this. Everyone knew, Gansey and his brothers and some people from school, they had all witnessed the way he had shifted. It was infuriating. That was why he hung out with Kavinsky and his friends. They had only noticed him when he had gotten mad and angry and mean looking and probably liked him precisely because he was like that. You couldn’t let down people who liked you exclusively for your worst, so they were never going to catch an old group photo and look at his younger self with sad eyes, nor ask about what he wanted to do with his life and comment nonsense about wasted potential and bright futures.

They saw nothing in him, not even a good time, and it was all fucking fantastic.

It wasn’t even a transactional relationship. Kavinsky just pulled up outside his apartment, sent a disgusting text and let him drink or do whatever was in the car just for the sake of having one more burnout to get fucked up with. The most they had ever asked of him was to get booze to save time or food when they were all too high to find the willpower to move, and K usually ended up sliding more money than needed for supplies anyway - not that buying everything himself would have been a problem for Ronan. 

He just had to sit back and enjoy himself. Or not enjoy himself, as long as he didn’t complain too much about what everyone else was doing. It was perfect. Most of the time he was already drunk before they even parked wherever they planned to hang out and the night went by nice and easy or, at least, nicer and easier that it would have if he had been alone in his room. It wasn’t entertaining. It didn’t make him feel any better or made his day memorable in the slightest, but at least he wasn’t alone. At least, he could convince himself that he was still part of something and not just slipping through the cracks by himself without anyone close enough to notice or care.

It wasn’t always good, though. The unfortunate thing about following shady and unpredictable characters like K was exactly that: they were shady and unpredictable. Ronan never knew what to expect from him or his friends, which sketchy character was going to show up, how all of them were going to behave once they got fucked up just enough. With a set up like that, it wasn’t a surprise that he had already witnessed more than one catastrophe sparked by the tiniest detail. There had been so much that he struggled to remember them all, at that point - two car crashes, at least a dozen fistfights in some parking lot, countless trips to the emergency room because someone had decided to be too brave or too adventurous or too stupid. 

Ronan, who seemed to be the only one to actually comprehend how messed up things like that was, had learned to consider those normal and simply file them in his brain as “bad nights”. Any night could become a bad one if someone decided to try hard enough and, at that point, he had long lost any will to try and stop them from happening. It wasn’t even scary anymore, not even when his own safety was at risk. Maybe it had never been.

He was thinking about that when Kavinsky decided that 4.33 a.m. was the perfect time to turn off his headlights in the middle of the road and put fate to the test by diving into the wrong lane. As Ronan felt the breeze brushing over his skin, fast enough to make him forget the sticky summer heat, perfectly aware of the impending danger, he thought he was supposed to feel something. High speed was exciting. Danger was exciting, it meant adrenaline, his heart beating faster, being unmistakeably alive. And if it wasn’t exciting, at least, it was supposed to scare the shit out of him, rip his organs out of his body with fear, fill his veins with ice because that  _ was _ testing fate. Because one car coming from the opposite direction meant death, horrible and bloody and theatrical, with the Mitsubishi smashed and their body turned into pulp. It was a fact, clean cut. They could all just die.

Ronan still didn’t feel anything. He was drunk out of his mind and he hadn’t spoken to his family in a month and he was driving in the wrong direction in the middle of the night and he didn’t feel anything. 

He was eighteen, and had people who loved him, and could have become anything, yet just watched as the speedometer went higher and the flashlights of a car came closer and he didn’t feel anything. It was terrifying, how much he didn’t feel anything.

“Fuck, bro I can’t die tonight. I haven’t told my mom.”

Ronan didn’t even understand who had said it, yet it was enough for him to snap out of it.

He thought _ Declan will be so fucking pissed if I die _ and then  _ oh my God Matthew  _ and then  _ fuck, Gansey is gonna think it’s his fault. _ Gansey. Poor Gansey, he really didn’t understand any of it. He still thought Ronan was the boy with long hair who sang and fell asleep on the grass and loved music that wasn’t just a way to drown his thoughts.

Fuck, he missed loving things. He missed enjoying a meal and having his best friend over and the faces his little brother made when he played for him. He missed so many things, yet everything felt far and impossible to reach. It hurt so much he felt sick.

He couldn’t lose it. Even the memories felt too special to let go by shutting off.

“Stop the car.”

Ronan heard the words before he could feel them leaving his throat. It was too much. He couldn’t stand any of it, not in that fucking car.

“What’s wrong, princess? Are yo-”

“I said fucking stop.”

Kavinsky raised an eyebrow and laughed, loud and unnerving, then turned left into the grass and stopped.

“So what, now?” he asked, smile thin and mocking, enjoying the sight of Ronan on the verge of breaking.

Ronan shook his head. Not Now. He couldn’t be around him now. 

So he left. Opened the car door and started walking in the opposite way, as fast as he could, trying not to trip or strive too far from the road and ignoring Kavinsky’s voice still trying to mock him from the car. He didn’t know where to go. He didn’t feel like he actually had a place to come back to, so he just kept going, letting the cold air shake him back into being awake.

He thought about many things: the people in his life, the ones that weren’t there anymore, his guitar still in his room at his old house. He thought about his mom, and his father’s laugh, and the smirk his older brother did when he didn’t want to show he thought something was funny. Many tiny things. Bad and good and in between.

It was dawn when he reached the gas station. Ronan hadn’t really planned on being there, the road just took him, but he wasn’t mad at it. He wondered if Adam was still at the shop, but felt too chickenshit to enter again, after how big of a fool he had made of himself last time. Then he saw him coming out of the back and thought that God had his weird, kind of fucked up way of reminding Ronan he existed.

He didn’t think Adam was going to notice him. Then he realized he was the only one there without even a car to justify his presence.

“Hi?” he muttered, uncertain, nervously grasping at his jeans with one hand.

Adam seemed tired and slightly weirded out, but not mad. 

His eyes were really blue. Another good thing.

“Are you okay? You look… bad.” he replied, and Ronan didn’t know if Adam genuinely didn’t care or he just looked too much like shit to be polite.

He didn’t lie, so he just shook his head. 

Adam sighed, long and pained, taking a moment to rest his hands on his legs, letting his head flop down. He had really beautiful hands. Good thing.

“I had a weird night.”

“No shit.”

Ronan didn’t think he had it in him to laugh, in that moment, yet an amused smile magically appeared on his face.

When Adam got back up, he was surprised to see the concerned look on his face, mixed with restlessness and a very understandable confusion. He watched him take a really deep breath and, for a moment, Ronan thought he was going to ask him about it. He didn’t.

“How about this. I’m gonna go back in and grab something to drink. Then I can give you a ride home. Unless your friends are coming to pick you up.”

“They aren’t.”   
“Well, they suck then.”


	4. Robert

Adam had pinned his first refusal letter to the wall of his apartment, right over his bed. He had decided, immediately, that he was not going to lie to himself about it. It was a bad thing. It was exactly what his psyche needed to crumble, the right tool to torture himself with, again and again, neatly printed down so that he could reread it and remember that he was right, he had been right all along: he didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve to get back on his feet and dream big, he didn’t deserve a new life and a roommate and pretty things to decorate his desk with. He didn’t deserve anything he had ever wished for in life, because he was bad, he was born bad and stupid and talentless and hadn’t managed to make anything to better of himself.

Then he stopped, and breathed, and tried to be rational for a minute. He had to be honest to himself about it. It was a bad thing, but it didn’t have to mean a catastrophe, because it wasn’t. His grades had been consistently stellar throughout his scholastic career. He had joined enough extracurricular classes to fill up every spare hour he had ever had and a couple of recommendation letters on top of that. He had worked really,  _ really  _ hard, for a  _ really  _ long time, and someone, eventually,  _ had _ to acknowledge it. It was too early to just give up on himself.

So he walked to his best friend’s house, and sat down on the stairs, and stared at the sky until it got dark, trying to make sense of the universe and his life and how much of a mess it was. Blue came and went next to him, wanting to make things better but also aware that they had different ways of coping and Adam sometimes needed silence and peace. That when you’re used to screaming and terror and chaos, sometimes the most reassuring thing that can happen is just remembering that you’re entitled to silence. 

He went in for dinner, began a conversation with Blue’s weird and lovely family about the first irrelevant thing that had come to mind, and decided he wasn’t going to miss work, not that night, nor the day after. He was going to continue life as if nothing had happened, because otherwise he’d be lost.

But he knew something was different, now. Being rejected once meant that he could be rejected again, that climbing through the shit life had thrown at him and coming out on top wasn’t going to be easy just because he had left the worst of it behind. He had to think about his future and the possibility it wasn’t going to be what he had imagined it to be. To realize that he might have worked hard for years and survived through hell only to become completely ordinary, with a job in a store and a tiny apartment, struggling the way he always had, for the rest of his life.  _ Not everyone gets to be special,  _ he told Blue, at the end of the night. She got so angry that it took them a week to make peace, because she actually wasn’t going to college and Adam was being mean to himself without even being sure it was the same for him and she couldn’t handle it. And he did get her point, he knew he wasn’t the only one worrying and being messed up about the future, but it wasn’t the same for Blue. She  _ was _ special and had people to fall back on, people who loved her and understood and would always welcome her in the time of need. Adam didn’t have that luxury. He had no middle ground between glory and misery.

Everything changed after that. He couldn’t stop thinking about his future, how to handle everything in the case his plans really weren’t going anywhere. In case he wasn’t going to college to have a well-paying job and reach a point in his life where he didn’t have to be afraid anymore. 

Adam knew he could have told Blue about everything, and be honest, and she would have understood, but it wasn’t that easy. Talking would have made it real.

He got other letters, but didn’t open them. He just kept carrying them around, stashed in the same book, letting them haunt him from the corner of his eye without ever being brave enough to face them. He couldn’t handle them. He couldn’t handle anything, actually, being alone and living like an adult and life shooting him around and never stopping.

He found himself thankful, again, for his night job at the store, because that was when time stopped. When you were mostly alone from midnight until dawn, the hours could stretch forever, the world slowed down to the point he forgot that morning would come, that everything would turn fast and terrifying in the morning.

He was also thankful for Ronan, the weird boy that came every night looking like a lost child and pretending to have a reason. 

Adam had given him a drive home, once, a weird abandoned factory with two old cars parked in the front. It was almost morning and the other had looked so tired and broken that he hadn’t been able to ignore it. Adam wasn’t one to ask invasive questions, but Ronan looked even less sober and stable than usual, so he couldn’t live with himself without asking him if he, at least, had someone at home to take care of him.

“I don’t know. I kinda live with this friend.” he had muttered, after thinking about it, looking sad and conflicted and something else he couldn’t quite place, but probably hurt.

It had been a weird answer to a direct question, but Adam didn’t really need to know more and Ronan didn’t look like he wanted to tell him, so he just let him go.

Adam didn’t know what happened, but something in Ronan had shifted, after that night. He came in earlier than he had before, mostly sober, and while he did always leave with the same cars and people, he always looked uneasy when they approached the parking lot. Adam wasn’t nosey, but they were pretty hard to miss since they came flashing their headlights and honking like madmen. And even more noticeable was the shift in Ronan, who was always too easy to read.

He liked having Ronan around. He usually hung out at the shop for an hour, pretending to look for things while sneaking up looks in Adam’s direction. He would then pick up a snack or magazine or something else useless and easy to spot and walk up to him to make awkward attempts at small talk. It was the strangest, most uncomplicated hour of Adam’s day, one that he could spend forgetting about paychecks and letters and colleges to make weird assumptions about the tall stranger who looked even more uncomfortable in his skin than he was. It was weird how much comfort he found in it, yet he never thought too much about it. Adam may not have deserved a great future or an easy life, but he knew he deserved at least one hour of peace, in that stretch of time where nothing felt real anymore.

“Has your pen pal been a dick to you or something?”

That night, apparently, Ronan had decided he could handle more than small talk. Or maybe he hadn’t decided and he just didn’t think a couple of letters he kept in a book could be that serious. Or maybe he just talked without even thinking first.

Adam found himself weirdly calm about it. He didn’t know why. Maybe Ronan was so removed from the situation and his life in general that it stripped everything of its fatality. Maybe nothing felt real in a store at 3 a.m. Maybe he just put him at ease.

“Don’t know,” he replied, plain and simple “I don’t even know if I  _ want _ to know.”

He didn’t specify that his pen pals were colleges and them being “a dick” meant that his life was going to be hard forever.

Ronan just shrugged, watching as he grabbed the book and picked every letter out, placing the envelopes on the desk with the blank side facing up.

“You’ll have to find out, one day.”

He couldn’t know that right under his eyes was Adam’s future. 

But Adam knew. He knew what every outcome meant. Either he was going to start climbing and building and becoming what he had worked for since he was a kid or just slip into his father’s shoes in a few years. His father. His father. He was everywhere, following him around when he picked something he liked in a grocery store, stuck with him at fast food queues, making his spine crack like a whip at every loud noise. He was other men and angry women and children crying with their heads down. He could crawl lighting fast under his skin every time he dropped a plate or came five minutes late or even just thought he had made a mistake. His voice, his hands, his head slightly tilted forward. Ready. Adam flinched, digging his nails into his palms, his entire body tense and ready and scared. It made no fucking sense. He had no reason to go that far, to bring himself that low, to let a pain that big eat at him all the time. And he didn’t always understand it, he didn’t always remember it, but he  _ knew _ he didn’t deserve to live like that.

Adam didn’t wait, didn’t think, he picked up the first envelope before he could change his mind. He tried to open it, peeling the paper with his nails but he kept ripping it, kept messing up and dropping it on the desk again and his fingers kept shaking and his heart kept going faster and faster and he just couldn’t do it.

He had forgotten about Ronan still standing in front of him until he took the letter from his hands and started opening it up, slowly, without a word, his eyes focused and his hands careful to the point he made it look like a sacred act. Once he was done, he did all the remaining envelopes, without pulling the papers out, just putting them back where Adam had placed them, one after the other.

“I can leave, if you want.” he said, looking straight into his eyes, calm and measured and direct.

It was weird, the way he had of changing point-blank, of dropping the awkwardness and the unease and just understand. Without a word. Adam had felt loved, before. By Blue and her family, his two-months girlfriend in freshman year, his mother when he was little. 

But he had never felt understood.


	5. Ronan

Ronan was surprised Adam hadn’t asked him to leave. Instead, he had let him stay and watch as he read letter after letter, his hands shaking, his eyes wide with fear and excitement.    
As Ronan suspected when he had made that joke, Adam didn’t have any pen pals. What he saw laid out on the desk once the other was done reading were four college acceptance letters. All Ivy League, with full scholarships, the world just couldn’t wait to pick Adam up to lead him through the best future possible. 

Four acceptance letters from prestigious schools and Adam had waited days to open them, just keeping them around like it was just a bunch of excess paper to write shopping lists on.

Four acceptance letters and he didn’t even want to open them, he couldn’t even keep his hands still enough to do it.

Ronan didn’t know what catastrophe had made Adam the kind of boy that shook while reading acceptance letters and turned away and apologized and asked to  _ please leave _ . It must have been big, so big Ronan couldn’t even imagine it, yet Adam had emerged from it with something good waiting for him.

He didn’t really want to leave, not when Adam looked so distressed, but Kavinsky and his friends had decided it was the perfect moment to show up, aggressively honking right out the store and making crude motions that were perfectly visible from the windows. That, at least, seemed to manage to take Adam’s mind off of things for a minute, because he had looked at him and furrowed his brows, looking at Ronan with something dark in his eyes that almost felt like disappointment.

“Why do you even hang out with those guys?” he had asked, and Ronan was shocked to realize he didn’t really know how to respond.

He still didn’t know when he got into the car and could only focus on how bad it smelled, like weed and cigarettes and sweat, and how loud and obnoxious the music was. He didn’t know as they left and Kavinsky struggled so much to drive in a straight line Ronan felt nauseous, as a hand tried to grab him by his thigh before he slapped it away and stepped out. 

Why was he hanging out with them? He had already stopped drinking with them after Kavinsky had tried to get them all killed, which had made the good nights longer and harder to tolerate and the bad nights nightmares. And he didn’t get the thrill in running with them anymore. He would have been better off in his own car, where he could feel the speed in his legs and be in control. 

He stepped into his dark and empty room and it hit him, finally. He hung out with them because he was alone. Because he had chosen to be alone. Because he had alienated everyone else in his life, including the person he lived with. Because he was hurting all the time and everything else could only hurt more and the things he loved hurt the most. Because he didn’t want to feel anything or be anyone without someone to tell him how.

And he wasn’t sure he still had time to fix it, he wasn’t sure there was still someone willing to hold his hand while he did, he wasn’t sure there would still be something waiting for him in his future.

Ronan layed in bed, thinking about his life in letters, like the closed envelopes laying on Adam’s desk. His brothers. Kavinsky and his friends. Gansey. His future. 

After hours and hours awake, he realized that wasn’t  _ that _ hard if he looked at it like that. He knew one was going to be good and another one wasn’t even worth opening. One was a bit trickier to figure out. The last one was entirely up to him, which made it really fucking scary but somewhere, deep down, it almost felt hopeful. Ronan wasn’t used to being hopeful.

He started driving by himself, at night. He told Kavinsky to fuck off and blocked his number, because he wasn’t worth it. Because he realized it was better for him to just be alone, to feel numb or scared or excited by himself and take himself home and be, at least, directing his own demise. He found it felt better, overall, and he could stop wherever he wanted, or slow down, or go fast, or see Adam for an hour and let his soul be brushed with warmth without anyone to see him and laugh at him for it. It was easier not to drown, where he wasn’t surrounded by people who couldn’t wait to throw themselves into unconsciousness. 

It wasn’t really an improvement, but he was less of a shitshow, so he couldn’t complain.

And his brain liked to have room to breathe, outside of his room, even if dragging himself out sometimes was still too much. It felt like something. 

Sometimes, Matthew would text him and he’d call him, or Declan would call him and he’d answer, and both would try not to show how relieved they were but Ronan knew, and sometimes he felt guilty, but other times he felt good.

One night, Gansey knocked at Ronan’s room, and he didn’t pretend he couldn’t hear him. He pulled his headphones out, got up and slowly opened the door to his best friend, wide awake, with his glasses and old man pajamas. He didn’t look mad or weird or even surprised. He just looked relieved, and Ronan felt safe enough to sit down with him and tell him everything. That he was gay and alone and weird and didn’t know what to do about any of it. That everything was happening all the time and he wished he could stop it or make it slow down while he figured out what to do with himself.

And Gansey nodded, and held his hand, and told him they were going to fix everything. Then they went to buy orange juice and, of course, it had to be at that store during Adam’s shift and Ronan had to blush horribly as the two of them awkwardly stood in front of the desk to pay.

Adam looked different, lately. Older and focused and determined, like a sportsman before a big race, like he was getting ready to face the world. He still made Ronan’s head spin.

The last thing he wanted to tell Gansey about was the boy crush he was still horribly navigating, but Ronan knew from the look on his face as they got to the car that it was exactly what his friend wanted to hear.

“He just works there. We talk, sometimes. That’s it.”

Because  _ he has been the best part of my day for two months and I helped him open his college acceptance letters _ sounded even weirder than it was.

“And you  _ like _ him?”

Because of course he was going to find out, because Ronan was too easy to read and Gansey too good at reading him.

“Jesus Christ, Gansey!” 

Which meant yes, absolutely yes, and he was  _ not _ ready to talk about it.

Gansey crossed his arms, and nodded, and waited, because that was just how he was. 

And then he said something stupid and brave, because he was Gansey, and he was his best friend and fuck, Ronan had missed him so much. 


	6. Adam

Adam didn’t think “yes” could be a scary answer until he turned nineteen and received four of them. He wasn’t prepared, he realized. No one had ever told him yes before. 

He had never been the kind of child that asked, his parents complained too much about how short they were on money for him to fantasize and God felt too distant for him to talk to. So Adam had been raised on currency, on his mother giving him pocket money if he contributed to the chores that turned into mowing lawns in the neighbourhood and then getting proper jobs as soon as he was able. He had never asked for anything but bought it, by working and saving and making his life a perfect machine. 

College submissions weren’t really requests by themselves, but a list of what he had done and who he was to be taken into consideration by old strangers who couldn’t really know him. 

But he knew, deep down, that he was asking. Not the schools, not the counselors or the admission committee or anyone with even the slightest amount of power over him. He was asking life to give him a chance, a choice, at least, in who he could be and how he could get there. The possibility of showing what he was made of, of doing something bigger and better with himself.

And the answer was yes. He could move out and get a college room to share with someone else, and make friends that didn’t know him and listen to professors lecturing people who had never had to work a day in their life. He was going to be Adam Parrish and nothing else. 

It was great, and exciting, and terrifying. 

For one, he didn’t know  _ who _ the fuck Adam Parrish was. Throughout his life he had been many things. Hardworking, polite, quick. He had been smart and funny and whatever he had needed to be to succeed, to go forward, to take his life one step higher than it was before. Nothing had felt natural, nothing had actually been  _ him _ . But was there anything that belonged to him, that stayed when no one was watching? Could someone that was so empty, made of borrowed parts, really deserve a shot?

_ Stop ruining college for yourself before it even starts, Blue _ had apprehended him, once, and she wasn’t really wrong.

He had been treating everything as if it was temporary. He still had to fix his car and buy new clothes and was still refraining from making any of the bigger purchases required. 

Adam wasn’t a man of faith, so he didn’t believe in what he could see. Yes, he had received the letter and begun the enrolling process and was more or less preparing for college, but he wasn’t really  _ sure _ it was going to happen. He wasn’t really sure that he really was going, that he wasn’t going to drive ten hours and reach campus to hear that it was all a mistake, that everything had been a cruel trick played by fate and his life was going to be exactly as underwhelming as he had feared it was going to be. He wasn’t being cynical or pessimistic or mean, he just didn’t want to be let down.

Not like he was actually prepared for the chance things were actually going okay. How  _ was _ he supposed to be prepared for that? His entire life had been just the process of nurturing his fight or flight response. He couldn’t just flip a switch and be normal, he was still adjusting to the thought of having a room with a door that could be locked. A place to go back, no matter how late, without having to feel his own heart sinking down his stomach.

The possibility it  _ wasn’t _ going to be a disaster was harder to stomach than bracing himself for a catastrophe. He was used to bad and nothing else.

_ What if all throughout your life you have blamed your bad luck and your family and the place you were born in, and then all of those disappear, and you have to live with yourself? _

Adam didn’t know how to do with free time and social situations. He didn’t know how to dance or study in groups or make small talk outside school. He had been too weird, too focused on work and progress and money, he never had time for fun. He didn’t know who he was going to be, with no one to check on him, to remind him, to set him back. There were so many possibilities, now, so many chances. He could meet and do and become anything. He could make friends with more people and find hobbies that he liked and learn to function, from time to time. As soon as he did his and made sure to keep his grades up, he was free. And Adam already knew what working hard meant.

He was so scared he was going to fuck it up, there was so  _ much _ he could fuck up.

Maybe he wasn’t really born to succeed. 

If you were born a weed there wasn’t really a place for you to blossom, no one would put you in a bouquet.  _ But dandelions are weeds too, and children pick them and think they’re the prettiest flower they’ve ever seen,  _ Blue would say.

And Adam knew, deep down, that someone already saw him like that.

Ronan Lynch had stopped having friends he had to run from, yet still came to the shop almost every night. He looked a little off, now, but also a little more rested, a little less lost. A couple of times he actually  _ was _ looking for something, and came to the desk with snacks and non alcoholic drinks and a mildly satisfied expression. He even brought a friend, twice, a tan, handsome sort with broad shoulders and a polite expression. The friend stared at him even harder than Ronan did, and elbowed in the sides and whispered things like they were a couple of children.

Adam was used to one weird stranger staring, but that could have been just Ronan being awkward around people or anxious someone could think he was stealing. This, the small, weird chaos around him, felt different. Like he was actually worth staring at. He wasn’t used to that. He wasn’t used to thinking he was worth anything, really and it was nice. 

Adam liked thinking it could be normal, that the day was going to come where hearing “yes” wouldn’t be weird, and being around accomplished people wouldn’t make him feel like an imposter, and he could find staring flattering instead of thinking it was a mistake or something was wrong with him. He liked thinking that one day, he could be free and not think everything was bad just because it was about him.

“So. Many fancy schools to pick from.”

Ronan usually avoided more important matters when talking, so Adam was surprised to hear such a pointed question. Even his posture was slightly different, leaning on the desk with both hands, one clamped into a fist so tight it had to hurt. He was closer and visibly more nervous, which was kind of sweet. 

Everything about Ronan was a bit nice, to be honest. He  _ was _ rude, cursed like it was nothing and often touched things without asking but still managed to be respectful. He knew how to step back when it wasn’t his place and never asked more than Adam was willing to say, leaving space when it was needed and almost being able to sense when it wasn’t a good night and Adam didn’t feel like talking at all. It was nice. It made him feel good even while being the most raw, most unfiltered version of himself, the one he could only be in the middle of the night, with little to know spectacle.

Maybe Adam  _ did _ exist, after all.

“Yep.”

Adam never thought he could just say that regarding him and the expensive colleges he was going to attend. Most people didn’t take that as an answer, they expected modesty or excitement or anything, really. But he didn’t know how he felt about it and he didn’t feel like he needed to fake it around Ronan.

“Already know where you’re going?”

“Harvard.”

“Oh. Cool. Yeah.”

“What about you?”

Ronan looked like he was going to combust. His objectively angry-looking face turned three shades redder. It was weirdly cute.

Adam saw him scratch the back of his head and look down.

“Oh. Yeah. I’m not going to college. Night school, maybe.” he whispered, shrugging.

He pressed his lips together, swinging side to side.

“I was thinking about moving. Maybe go up north, get an apartment with my friend.” Ronan added, gesturing to mimic someone short and broad.

“I see.”

This time, Adam let the silence linger on purpose, marveling at how uneasy Ronan looked, pulling at his fingers and moving his weight from one leg to the other.

He clearly wanted to say something. He kept looking at Adam and the entrance and the floor tiles, like he was supposed to find the words written somewhere along the way.

Adam thought about his life. He thought about the trailer, and the tiny apartment, and college. About the things that were going to change and the ones that already had changed and the ones  _ he _ was desperately trying to change. The ones that were never going to change.

He didn’t know if he was ever going to stop flinching at loud noises or feel at ease in his hometown. He didn’t know if, one day, his accomplishments were going to feel like accomplishments and not steps to take to crawl his way out of misery. He didn’t know if he was ever going to  _ stop _ thinking about himself like something that had to crawl and fight and spit blood to be considered whole. He hoped so. He hoped he could be normal, one day. 

Happy, even.

But for now, Adam could try and acknowledge the things he had, and enjoy the few that made him feel good, and forget about the possibility that everything could blow up in his face at any time. So he didn’t give Ronan time to either talk or leave.

“Do you want to go for coffee, later? I can do six, if you’re awake.”

For now, Adam could enjoy the thrill of giving the handsome boy that had been looking at him for weeks a half-smile and bask a little in how nervous it seemed to make him.

“I- yeah, sure. I’m gonna be awake. I-”

Ronan took a deep breath, and looked at him, and almost smiled.

He looked tired, and surprised, and a little hopeful.

“I’d really like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first and foremost, i have to thank gigia, because she's always the [one person who believes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRxsX_30tjs) in me and basically the only reason why i haven't rewritten everything approximately 100 times. she always keeps me going and listens to all of my bitching which is a lot. i love her and you should totally check out [her work](https://shamanda-lie.tumblr.com/post/622446443044765696/from-the-fic-the-dude-has-a-million-names-and) for the bigbang.
> 
> this was a collaboration with the lovely [fricklefracklefloof](https://www.instagram.com/fricklefracklefloof/), with the absolutely VITAL outside help of [creativefiend19](https://archiveofourown.org/users/creativefiend19) who i owe everything and have both to be thanked twice because i was horrible with timing and replying and everything. they are both allowed and invited to spit on my grave.
> 
> i know this is a lil weird, i won't try to excuse it and I'm absolutely okay with it. i still hope you liked it.
> 
> thank you for reading this far!


End file.
